Danse Macabre
by dangerfield
Summary: People are so afraid to die that they never begin to live. AU IchiRuki
1. Chapter 1

_I'm very aware of how many times this idea has been played with, fortunately we all have varying ideas on the concept of death and the afterlife both romanticized and factual, this story with reflect many of my own ideas and personal experiences._

_Do I believe in ghosts? Yes, I do. I've had many odd encounters with spirits throughout my life anywhere from sights, sounds, smells and presences. This story will also reflect on that._

_I also don't own Tite Kubo's Bleach_

_That said, please enjoy my story_

_~dangerfield_

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><p><strong><em>Danse Macabre<em>**

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**_He who doesn't fear death dies only once.  
>Giovanni Falcone <em>**

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[_he died on a Thursday_]

With the IV relentlessly pushing pointless vitality into the crook of his arm he knew he was stumbling on the remains of a lost cause.

_Yes, he knew. Why couldn't they?_

Midnight's cold light had crept in like a thief into his room from the cracked blinds, painting the linolium floors an icy blue. It was certainty. Tonight was his night.

Despite this, he did not wish to go, _did not want to go._ How can life,

_just seventeen short years of it_

abandon him the way it was now? He loved life, took it for granted at times, yes, but loved it. And , now...

Here it was leaving him weary, immoble; his body his own crumbling prison.

_He fought that weariness. a fruitless battle. losing to himself and his mortality._

He coughed and felt a thick coppery warmth at the back of his throat...

Cancer, he concluded after some deliberation, just did not favor some.

He eased himself back into his cushions, resignation growing with every passing second with that _heaviness _hot on its heels, that single thought filling his mind with a dull ringing

_that he must die._

It just wan't fair... It just wasn't...

[_his eyes are closed but the blackness behind them is slowly becoming thicker. a new kind of darkness._]

and he was...

[_the steady beeping of the machine at his bedsde is becoming less so_]

... he was _scared, terrified. _Not of dying, but of _after_. Would it just be a complete fade to black? would he cease to exist? just a name and a memory and a single paragraph in the Sunday obituaries?

Like any sane human being_ he feared it_.

The very idea gripped his failing heart in a overpowering vicegrip

**_Tonight is my night_**

[_the thin, green-glowing jagged line studdered at his words. this was the truth._]

**_but I won't be a memory_**

[_the line plummeted and went flat. a single keening note was his final salute._]

**_BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP_**

**_. . ._**

**_Sun, Oct. 15_**

_Sunday Newspapers_

_Obituaries_

_Kurosaki Ichigo, 17, Loving son and brother._

_Valiently fought, right to the very end._

_Born July 15- Died October 13_

_I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.  
>Willa Cather <em>

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	2. Chapter 2

_Special thanks to the ones that favorited and/or watched this story._

_Danse Macabre is literally French for 'Death Dance', an allegory of universal death, no matter one's station in life. The Danse Macabre consists of the dead or personified Death (the Grim Reaper and the like) summoning representatives from all walks of life to danse alongside the grave, typically with a pope, emperor, king, child and laborer. They were produced to remind people of the fragility of of life and the vain glories of earthly life. _

_Onto the story._

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><p><strong><em>Danse Macabre<em>**

Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave.  
>Joseph Hall<p>

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{_she died on a Thursday. fifteen years ago_}

She sat upon her headstone, a simple structure constructed of milky white marble engraved with the only thing she had left to claim as hers: a name and an epitaph.

She sat, watching and perfectly still, a talent only those who were disconected from the physical world could master. Her hair fluttered in the stagnant fall air as she watched the procession of glittering vehicles meander pass her resting place reminicent of a weary caravan, a gleaming hearse leading the way.

She observed in silence, in her own seperate, silent mourning for the newly passed.

{_violet eyes set and sombre. almost detatched. she's seen many a funeral_}

Set slightly apart from the small ring of mourners hovering over the freshly dug grave is a single figure. Like her he is seperate from the others: a slim figure between here and _there_, marked by his shared intagiblity with her, like a long-faded Polaroid. Unlike her he has everything to do with the congragation.

_After all, this is _his _funeral._

She gives a near inperceptable nod in his direction; she does not want to to interact with him just yet. His memories of still being alive are still fresh in his being.

_After all he _is_ watching his own funeral. Like a dream you just _can't_ control. No matter how much you try._

{_she remembers her own. vaguely. surrealism never seemed more real_}

The last prayers are read, a few things are said, and the casket is lowered followed by the fragrant presence of many a flowered wreath.

The congragation slowly thins trailed by dampened conversations.

Gravediggers follow soon after, banishing the existance of the hole in the earth.

But the figure still reamains.

{_so does she_.}

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	3. Chapter 3

_Many thank yous to reviewers, favorites, and watchers, every one of your notices made my day!_

_In this chapter I introduce some of my own spectulation on burial traditions. I was born Roman Catholic but I'm mostly agnostic and very uneasy about the idea of mentioning religion on a site visited by people worldwide. Please do not take it in the wrong way, I do not mean to put one religion over another._

_I know burial traditions vary in religion and culture and I'm unsure how many people who read this story practice something totally different, but forgive me when I portray my own. I'll use it in this story because it is something I'm familiar with in describing in general knowledge. _

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><p><strong><em>Danse Macabre<em>**

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**_Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.  
>W. Somerset Maugham<em>**

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[_he died on a thursday_]

They were rushing, madly. Scurrying franticly like a disturbed ant's nest into his room, checking his vitals

_which were now nonexistant_

thrusting a oxygen mask onto his face

_forcing dead lungs to breathe_

his doctor trying to resuscitate him

_telling him to breathe, goddamit, he wasn't giving up now_

And throughout all _this, _this madness, this _whatever it was_

_he watched._

And, Lord, _why couldn't, wouldn't they stop?_ Pounding away on the silent chest of a cadaver, a husk, a corpse,

_he refused to call it 'his body'. even worse to call it an 'it'_

paling and steadily losing the little color it had, eyes half-closed exposing thin strips of white scelera and familiar-yet-dulled amber irises, orange hair playing shocking contrast against the bedsheets.

[_familiar features on a stranger. _that _wasn't him, he was himself._]

The defibillators were wheeled out, lubricated, charged, and made contact with the stranger's bared chest making his torso jump upward in response.

Once, twice, three times.

_jumpstart failed._

**_Time of death, 2:25 AM_**

_..._

He remains by the stranger's side

_was there anything else he could do other than stay?_

as they cover his face with a white linen sheet, wheel him out from the room

_the squeaking from the front right wheel of the gurney is a little more than deafening._

and he follows.

[_he is hardly aware of the soundlessness of his movements, let alone when he started following_]

He doesn't know what to think. What to feel.

[_not that he can distinctly feel anyway_]

It's all too much.

_..._

The chapel is filled with mourners and flowers. It's a sight he's seen once upon a time.

_the only difference is that he was a mourner, not the mourned _

And he's just an observer to all this. The tears, the prayers, _everything. _Unable to do anything.

Oh, he's tried to make contact. Even though common sense says that doing so is hopeless.

_Tried to talk, tried to touch, tried to get their attention_

He can see them, but they can't see him.

All this talk about him being with them in spirit is really grating on his nerves. He's right damn _there_. He really _never_ left.

**_Stop talking about me like I'm gone._**

The funny thing is is that he never believed in all this 'the dead walk among the living' stuff when he was, well still around.

Funny...

**_..._**

Playing observer, again. This time in a rusty cemetery, watching as the pallbearers lift a casket

[_a box, really. it's square, it holds stuff. just a box with a fancy name_]

from the hearse.

From his vantage point he can no longer hear the tears he knows are falling. All he wants to do is observe; it's already bad enough that everyone keeps speaking of him in the past-tense...

They're lowering the casket (_box_) down six feet under, never to see daylight again. In what seems like an eternity it hits the earthen ground with a solid _thump._

_and for the first time he _feels

All around him, subtle hums of individual energy wander the cemetery of their own voilation. They burn like candles, cold fires, each with their own differences in frequency and strength. Scattered all four corners of the hallowed ground he stands in.

He slowly realises what he's feeling is the cemetry. Every last one of _them._

_And what's more _

_one is behind him._

And the observer has become the observed.

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End file.
